When Was Caesar Salad Actually Invented?

The salad has been one of the best ways to get creative with ingredients forever. As long as the flavors complement one another, there's no limit on what can be added and served up. The Caesar salad got its flavors so right, that it's been ingrained in the tastebuds of salad lovers everywhere. When did this leafy perfection grace the world with its presence?

The short answer is that the Caesar salad was served to its first patron 100 years ago on July 4, 1924, by Italian chef Caesar Cardini, who immigrated to the United States and opened a restaurant before moving to Mexico to escape prohibition laws and freely serve alcohol. In Tijuana, Mexico, he opened Caesar's Hotel, which became popular with celebrities looking to indulge in a drink without legal repercussions.

Cardini really knew how to build a better salad, and by the 1940s, he was distributing bottled versions of his dressing to several cities around America. Following Cardini's death in 1956, his daughter Rosa Maria Cardini patented the dressing. Cardini's story is relatively well-known, but there are those who argue against its legitimacy and say the salad's true origins lie elsewhere.

Was the restaurant owner and chef Caesar Cardini the mastermind behind the Caesar salad? Or was this popular meal conjured up by another creative mind in food? The Caesar salad lore is murky at best. One story claims that the salad was actually first made by Cardini's brother, Alessandro, when he served the salad to a group of American airmen from San Diego.

Another version of Caesar salad's beginnings says that it was the recipe of a Caesar's Hotel employee's mother. The employee, Livio Santini, said that his mother's recipe was such a hit at the restaurant that Cardini claimed he created it.

With how rapidly the Caesar salad became a success, it's not surprising multiple people claim to be responsible for it. In 1953, the salad was determined to be "the greatest recipe to originate in the Americas in 50 years," by the International Society of Epicures in Paris (via The Washington Post). The original recipe is something that Cardini himself shared in a 1952 interview with Aline Mosby. Cardini named a "one-minute egg, garlic croutons, Parmesan or Romano cheese, lemon juice, garlic mustard, Worcestershire sauce, white pepper, pear vinegar, and olive oil" as the components in the salad. By the time of the interview, the Caesar salad was already a culinary giant.

The Caesar salad held tight to its popularity after Cardini's death, and in 1988, a Super Bowl weekend celebration was determined to be the perfect environment to showcase just how phenomenal the salad was. Rosa Cardini accomplished a large feat by preparing a "super Caesar" in a 14-foot salad bowl to feed 3,000 people in Tijuana.

The salad maintained its fame while the restaurant where it was first served did not. While on a walk in 2010, Juan José Plascencia, the owner of the Tijuana-based restaurant group, Grupo Plascencia, saw that Caesar's restaurant was shutting its doors for good. Plascencia moved swiftly to save the historic restaurant and reopened it several months later on July 24, 2010, in the same location it called home for many decades.

The history of Caesar salad is a long and winding 100-year road that's left millions with an appreciation for salad, as long as it's served up with a delicious-enough dressing